Strukturieren mit Multitrees: Ein Fachkonzept zur verbesserten Navigation in Hypermedia

Abstract

Hypermedia are more and more common in business practice. Insufficient navigation frequently leads to the phenomenon of ‘lost in hyperspace’.In addition to recent contributions in web-engineering, we suggest an assessment of navigational efforts in alternative structured hypermedia. The main advantage is its applicability previous to implementation. Different topologies are evaluated with respect to three criteria: movements burden and choices burden for the user, and the complexity of the resulting graphs. A sophisticated concept for structuring hypermedia by multi-trees is suggested. In contrast to competing concepts, e.g., the hyperbolic tree, the multi-tree offers improvements for both the provider as well as the user. The provider benefits from an increased flexibility for designing access paths. Moreover, the user takes advantage of decreased navigational efforts. The implementation of the concept is demonstrated by means of the prototype DYMU-tree.